And then the day came when someone actually read the book...Any writer will understand the excitement and anxiety that goes along with finally letting someone read your work. I recently handed over my entire manuscript to my sister to be my first reader ever. She has listened to me talk about it for years now, so I figured I owed her the first read. Besides, she reads the fantasy-fiction genre, and can be pretty brutal when need-be.From the point where I printed out the MS for the first time last month, topping off at more than 200k words, to the much slimmer version I emailed to her last week, it's been a journey.In my previous post I babbled ignorantly on about how easy I found "killing my darlings," or editing, had been. And it was at first. But when I was still at 190-something thousand words after cutting 20- to 30 pages, I had to take a step back. I'm pretty realistic, and as much as I loved the 40 or so pages still lingering that were keeping me away from my goal of 160k words, I realize that I'm a newbie, a no-name writer, and a book of that length would be daunting coming from an untested author.Despite knowing this, I tried going through the MS first and cutting down sentences, paragraphs and a page here or there in hopes that it would drop my word count down and bring me to a more reasonable length. I mean I want people to read it. But I moaned, I procrastinated, I debated and shook my head. It was too painful. I couldn't do it. But then I did. I clicked command-x and deposited the first 50 or so into another document, saved it, and said adieu—for now. A prequel could always rise from those ashes.Instantly, I felt a sense of freedom, a weight lifted from my spirit and I turned to my book with new eyes and a better sense of length, pace and readability. And I've been happier ever since. But it certainly wasn't easy, I say to my previous naive self. I even got the word count under 150k. I mean it's fantasy, after all, so it's got a little heft.This all brings me to handing it over for the first time to be read. I'm certain my sister wants to ring my neck, because I keep finding reasons to talk to her to find out what she thinks. But it's an amazing feeling to have written a book and have even just one reader, who so far, likes it.

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Author

K.M. Randall writes fantasy and paranormal for both a general and young adult audience. Her debut novel, an epic fantasy called Fractured Dream, launched in June 2014, and her second book, The Reaper's Daughter, launched May 2015. Randall also published Fairytale Lost, a prequel to Fractured Dream, as an exclusive on Wattpad. She blogs about dreams, female heroines, and activism and its relevancy to the literary and fictional world. And when in the season, sometimes she just likes to talk about Halloween. She is currently hard at work on the second book in the Dreamer Saga series, Shattered World.